


Is This What Love Is?: A Camsten Ficlet Collection

by alessandralee



Category: Stitchers (TV)
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M, Ficlet
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-04-11 00:50:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 4,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4414598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alessandralee/pseuds/alessandralee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of my Camsten drabbles and ficlets, mostly prompted via tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Under the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> All my shorter Camsten pieces (under 1000 words), all in one place.

“Stargazing?” Kirsten asks, taking in the scene on the roof of Cameron’s building.

“Stargazing,” he confirms, ignoring the derision in her tone. “You’re the one who couldn’t sleep.”

It’s not like Kirsten hadn’t had bouts of insomnia in the past. With a brain that can’t process the passage of time, it wasn’t hard for her sleep to get thrown off track. Usually, she just waited it out by diving into a new project.

This time, she’d texted Cameron.

She wasn’t exactly sure what had driven her to do that.

When she doesn’t respond, Cameron says, “No one’s come to take away Robbie’s telescope, so we might as well get some use of out it. It was either this, or letting you invade my neighbors privacy some more.”

Kirsten doesn’t say anything, but the look she gives him is enough to make it clear that she’s more interested in watching his neighbors than the night sky.

“I’m not letting you spy on my neighbors anymore,” he tells her. At this point, he can’t look out his own window without worrying what he might catch 6F doing. He doesn’t want to know anymore.

Kirsten sighs, and joins him at the telescope, “Fine, but there had better being something up there that’s more interesting to look at that Orion’s Belt.”


	2. Asleep

“I’m glad you’re not dead,” she tells his sleeping body. A puff of air expels from her nose, not quite a snort. “That sounded callous, even for me.”

There were plenty of areas in life where Kirsten maintained a level of accuracy she could be proud of. She was (or at least she had been) on her way towards a PhD in computer science. Her coding was painstakingly perfect, it had to be. She could calculate time in her head. Again, she had to be able to.

She could push people away using as few words as possible. It wasn’t her proudest achievement, but it also wasn’t something she was unaware of.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t as good with the words that held people to her, the ones that showed gratitude and appreciation, as she was with the ones that sent them running.

Hence the fact that she was practicing on Cameron while he slept in a hospital bed, completely unable to hear how she tripped over her words.

“What I mean is, it was stupid of you to get in the way. You could have died,” she pauses, gathers her thoughts. “But if you hadn’t maybe I’d be dead. And I appreciate that. I don’t know if I could have done the same in your place. So thank you.”

Her words aren’t enough; they don’t really express the depth of her gratitude. He means more to her than a lucky shove out of the path of a moving car (not for the first time, either). He means more to her than the sum of his actions, the number of times he’s been there for her.

Kirsten has never felt the need to struggle to express herself. It’s never been worth the effort.

Right now, though, she’s wishing she’d had more practice.


	3. Drunk

“So what’s going on with you and Kirsten?” Linus asks midway through his second beer.

He’s firmly rejected Cameron’s suggestions of tequila shots and mango margaritas, his usual weakness. It seems someone took his accidental password reveal very seriously.

Cameron, however, has no such weakness, and is on his third strawberry daiquiri.

“I thought we agreed not to talk about work at dudes’ night?” Cameron reminds him, cringing a little at the name. That was Linus’s idea.

“We always say we’re not gonna talk about work,” Linus says, “but then we run out of things to talk about after thirty minutes and break our promise.”

He does have a point. Neither one of them has a huge social life outside of the Stitchers Program, and they already spend most of their time together at work. They can only rehash tv and videogame discussion for so long.

“Nothing’s going on with Kirsten,” Cameron eventually offers. “We’re colleagues. I think we might even be friends. But beyond that… nothing.”

Linus shakes his head, “But you want there to be something beyond that.”

“No,” Cameron says immediately. “Dating someone you work with is asking for trouble. Case in point, you and Camille.”

“Methinks the Cameron doth protest too much,” Linus takes a long sip from his beer before adding. “You’re totally transparent. Camille’s started taking bets on when you’ll confess.”

Cameron’s not exactly pleased to hear this. Whatever feelings her may or may not have for Kirsten (and he totally doesn’t have them, he’s full of friendly concern for her wellbeing), they’re definitely not anyone else’s business.

“Well then tell her to knock it off,” he insists, throwing back the last of his drink. “Or I might have to resort to drastic measures.”

Linus raises an eyebrow in amusement, “Like what?”

Cameron can’t think of anything, but he says, “I’ll tell everyone about you and Camille.”

He wouldn’t. He’s not entirely sure what Maggie’s policy is regarding in-house romances, but even if he knew she’d be okay with that, it’s not his secret to tell.

Linus just laughs, “I’m pretty sure everyone already knows. We’re not exactly subtle.”

He might actually have a point there.

Still, this is not the line of conversation Cameron was hoping for at dudes’ night. At this point all he really wants to do is go home and sleep. Hopefully wake up in a better mood.

He flags down the bartender to close out his tab.


	4. Crying

It takes Cameron a few minutes to realize that the sniffles he hears are coming from the woman next to him, not the TV.

“Are you crying?” he asks, puzzled.

“Yes,” Kirsten responds, sounding even more surprised than he does.

It’s a little weird. Okay, it’s a lot weird, and Cameron’s not exactly sure what to do in this situation.

“Do you need a tissue?” he offers, gesturing towards the kitchen where a box of tissues sits. “Do you want me to stop the movie?”

“No,” Kirsten says, her voice heavy with held back sobs. She dabs at her eyes with the sleeves of her sweater. “It’s almost over. It’s just so sad.”

“It’s a Nicholas Sparks movie,” Cameron comments. “They’re always sad.”

He has a sneaking suspicion she’s never actually seen one before.

“I thought chick flicks were supposed to have happy endings,” she complains. “Jamie’s dead.”

Awkwardly, Cameron pats Kirsten on the shoulder. She leans into his touch just the tiniest bit.

“Actually, I think they’re just supposed to be romantic and predictable,” he tells her. “Sad and happy are both possibilities.”

“Your DVD collection sucks,” she tells him bluntly.

Now the credits are rolling, she’s managed to stop crying, but her eyes are still red.

“Hey, I offered you a Star Trek marathon,” he reminds her. “You’re the one who chose this.”

“Next time, remind me to bring something from Camille’s collection,” she tells him.

“Sure thing,” he promises.

And he means it. Having a crying woman on his couch is a little weird; he’d like to avoid a repeat.

Sighing and shaking her head, Kirsten tries to clear her head. If Cameron finds her crying a little weird, then she finds it downright bizarre.

In her mind, she chalks it up to residual emotion from the stitch.

“I need another glass of wine,” she excuses herself.


	5. Surprise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just so we're clear, I wrote this before the surprise party episode aired.

It takes Cameron a moment to notice Kirsten’s presence, he’s so absorbed in his work. But when he finally looks up, there she is, leaning over him with a smirk he’s come to associate with risky behavior and lectures from Maggie.

His heart races, and he tries to tell himself it’s the impending doom Kirsten likely brings that causes it. Too bad he’s a terrible liar, even to himself.

“What brings you to my neck of the woods, Stretch?” he asks.

They aren’t actually in the middle of a specific project, so he’s not sure what kind of danger she could be preparing to throw them in.

“No confetti,” she tells him. “It’s a mess to clean up.”

“Come again?” he wrinkles his brow in confusion. What confetti has to do with stitching is beyond him.

“For the party you’re throwing me. No confetti,” she elaborates.

Cameron gapes at her for a moment before awkwardly recovering.

“What party?” he asks, his false confusion completely over the top. “I don’t know about any party.”

“You and Linus need to work on your indoor voices,” she tells him. Cameron cringes; he knew they weren’t keeping things quiet enough. “I heard you debating whether throwing confetti on me when I got home would be overkill or not, and it will be. I like my house clean, and that stuff gets stuck in the nooks and crannies for years.”

“Still not sure what you’re talking about,” Cameron tells her. If he breaks now, Camille will totally blame him. “But if I did know, I would pass that information along as soon as you give me a minute alone.”

Kirsten grins and heads off towards the changing room. As soon as she’s out of sight, Cameron whips out his phone to call Linus.

“Kill the confetti,” he instructs as soon as Linus answers.


	6. "I bought you a ticket."

“Who are,” Kirsten leans over Cameron’s shoulder to squint at his computer screen, “Kinetic Experience?”

Her voice in his ear is a surprise, but definitely not an unwelcome one.

Cameron shrugs, careful not to knock her chin where it hovers next to his face. He feels like he’s always aware of her, but having her so close throws him off balance.

“Some band they play on the radio station I listen to on my drive to work,” he tries to play it cool.

Kirsten pulls back, standing up straight. Cameron hits pause on the video he’d been playing and turns in his chair to look at up at her.

“Don’t you usually listen to NPR?” she asks.

When she’s in the car, he does. Camille accused him of doing it to impress her, but it had started out as him not wanting her critical opinion of his music tastes. At this point it’s just habit.

All he can think of to say back is, “Sometimes.”

Kirsten nods in acceptance of his answer, “They’re not bad.”

In response, Cameron pulls open the top drawer of his desk, fishing blindly for the two slips of paper he’d stashed there that morning.

“Good,” he tells her. “They’re playing at some club downtown on Saturday; I bought you a ticket.”

He holds up the two tickets to show her. She looks down her nose at them.

“I’m not big on concerts,” she tells him, then turns on her heel to head to her own workstation.

“But you did say you wanted to open yourself up to more normal experiences,” he reminded her. “Normal people our age go to concerts.”

Not that he really has a leg to stand on when it comes to normal. Video games, and the occasional night at a bar with Linus was really the closest he got to normal, and bro night was getting more and more infrequent.

Awkwardly, Kirsten spins back around to face him.

“I said that to Camille, not to you,” she crosses her arms over her chest.

“Yeah, well she has a date that night,” he informs her. “Linus says he’s going over to your place for a romantic fondue dinner.”

Kirsten scowls in disgust. It’s not like this is the first time Camille’s had Linus over without warning her, but the thought of the two of them bent over a fondue pot was particularly annoying. They’ll probably try feeding each other.

“I guess a concert can’t be too bad,” she acquiesces. “Text me the details.”

Quickly, before Cameron can talk her into a beach day or a trip to an amusement park, she shoots across the lab to her own desk. Hopefully Maggie will arrive with work soon.

She completely misses the love-struck grin Cameron shoots at her retreating back.


	7. Birthday

Cameron’s just stepped off the elevator when Camille approaches him to threateningly whisper in his ear, “She worked really hard on the cake. You’d better at least pretend to enjoy it.”

He’s a little confused. Yeah, it’s his birthday, but he’d assumed working in an office full of busy scientists trying to solve crimes would just send someone to buy a cake.

Also he can’t imagine Kirsten, the only logical ‘she’ for Camille to be referring to, baking. As far as he knows, she can’t even cook eggs. He’s not even sure she owns measuring cups.

But she must, because there’s a chocolate frosted cake with bright green candles waiting on his desk.

He’s touched, really. He spotted a post-it note with a reminder of his birthday on her desk a few days ago, but all he’d expected was a card an offer to go get drinks later with Linus and Camille.

A cake requires effort, a trip to the grocery store, some time in the kitchen.

Kirsten doesn’t waste effort on things just because she’s expected to do them. She only bothers with things that she thinks are important. That means she finds him important.

It’s not news; they’re friends. But it’s a nice reminder.

A cake is a labor of love.

Still, Camille’s warning looming in his mind, and he tries not eye the cake with too much suspicion.

It looks perfectly normal, at least.

“Happy birthday,” the whole team choruses. Even Fisher showed up for the occasion, although Cameron’s pretty sure he’s only there for the baked goods.

After a particularly off-key round of singing, Kirsten hands him a slice of cake.

The moment of truth arrives.

The first bite is moist. No, it’s actually wet. Oily. Like someone upended half a bottle of vegetable oil into the batter. It practically oozes down his throat.

“Yum,” he says, his biggest smile plastered across his face. “I love chocolate.”

He might never touch chocolate cake ever again.

Kirsten smiles back. Behind her, Camille grins like she’s enjoying his pain.

Somehow, he manages to fake his enjoyment of the entire slice. Even Camille looks impressed.

At least until Cameron tells Kirsten to cut everyone a slice.

Camille’s halfway through her own piece, trying to finish it before anyone notices how pained she looks, when Kirsten finishes distributing at takes a bit of her own.

“This is awful,” she grimaces.

“It’s not bad,” Cameron insists. Linus nods in agreement.

Kirsten pushes the remainder of the cake off Cameron’s desk and into the garbage, throwing her own plate on top of it.

“Are we Stitching this morning?” she asks Maggie.

“Nothing yet,” the other woman says, then returns to her office.

Kirsten nods and grabs Cameron by the hand.

“Come one. We’re getting cupcakes, cupcake,” he tells him.

He lets her pull him out the door. He deserves cupcakes for what he just suffered.


	8. Back to School Shopping

“Wow, someone went to town at OfficeMax,” Cameron comments.

Kirsten looks down at her new purchases.

“I like to be organized,” she tells him.

She also likes to be neat, and the mismatched desk set from the supply closet just wasn’t cutting in. Now everything is matching, sleek black, from her file folder, to the small black picture frame she’d just stuck a team photo into.

Sure, she’d had to elbow a kid out of the way to avoid getting stuck with some cheesy kitten folders, but it had been worth it.

“You don’t even use your desk,” Cameron reminds her.

“Now I will,” Kirsten says. For emphasis, she pulls her laptop out of her bag and sets it down on top of the desk.

“Can I have your old pencil cup, then?” Cameron asks. “I think Tim drank out of mine. It smells like that weird energy drink he likes.”

Kirsten looks at him apologetically, “I already threw it out.”

Cameron sighs and returns to his workstation. Unlike Kirsten’s, it’s a mess of all this week’s work, file on top of file, annotated and then never dealt with. He’ll deal with it after he gets something to eat.

After a quick raid of Camille’s snack drawer (not the big secret she thinks it is), Cameron returns to his desk. It’s still piled high with work stuff and old comic books, but now there’s Kirsten’s old silver cup holder sitting front and center.

She even filled it with a package of multi-colored highlighters.


	9. Corn Maze

“So I officially think we can say we have a terrible sense of direction,” Cameron comments.

He just spotted the same broken corn stalk he tripped over five minutes ago. They’re officially lost.

He’s never taking Camille’s advice on fun fall activities ever again. They live in LA; he’s just going to pretend autumn doesn’t exist.

“This is dumb, I’m ready to go,” Kirsten stands with her hands on her hip, concentrating on the wall of cornstalks in front of her.

“That’s the problem,” Cameron retorts, more annoyed at how unsuccessfully they’ve navigated this maze than at Kirsten herself, “we can’t go. Not until we figure out how to get to the end of the maze.”

“Come on,” she rounds a corner Cameron swears they’ve already been down.

He considers just waiting where he is. She’ll probably be back in a few minutes, still completely lost.

Then he hears a weird rustling sound. Curiosity wins out, and he chases after her just in time to watch her wedge her way between the closely planted cornstalks.

“I’m pretty sure this is cheating,” he reminds her. They’re supposed to go around the walls of corn, not through them.

“I’m pretty sure this is the only way we’re getting out of here,” she replies.

Cameron sighs and mentally prepares himself to get uncomfortable close to some corn.


	10. Bonfire

By the time Kirsten’s done scoping out the fairgrounds, Cameron’s bought himself a caramel apple and situated himself in front of the bonfire.

“We’re here to work,” Kirsten folds her arms over her chest and stares him down.

He refuses to rise to it.

“It’s kind of hard to find whatever clues Ed Clark left you in the middle of FallFest,” Cameron points out. “We’re going to have to wait until everything clears out on Monday.”

As much as she doesn’t want to admit it, Cameron’s right. Between the food vendors, the carnival games, the craft booths, the giant fire in the middle of it all, and the swarms of people taking up every inch of breathing room, this is going to be like finding a needle in a haystack.

A sweaty, inebriated haystack.

Kirsten storms away, determined to do one last sweep of the area before she throws in the towel.

That lasts until she finds the doughnut booth. Apple cider donuts are enough to rob even her of her motivation.

She’s finished her donut, and picked up a cup of mulled wine and a bag of caramel cookies by the time she’s returned to Cameron.

She pushes him to the edge of his seat as she slides in next to him, and offers him a sip of her drink.

“I’m more interested in your napkins,” he tells her.

Caramel apples taste delicious, but they leave behind a big mess.

Kirsten can do one better. She pulls out a little packet of wet wipes from her bag.

“You’re like a boy scout,” Cameron says with gratitude. “Always prepared.”

Kirsten rolls her eyes, “Shut up and enjoy the fire.”


	11. "Just because."

“There’s chocolate on my desk,” Cameron stops her as she steps out of the changing room.

Kirsten knows. She put it there.

“Yes,” she says.

“Why is there chocolate on my desk?” he asks.

She shrugs, “Just because.”

Just because he almost died, he did die. Just because he almost didn’t come back.

Just because she saw things in his head, things she hadn’t known. And she’s not sure what to do now.

Just because things are different, and she wants to fix them. But she doesn’t know how.

Of course, she can’t say any of this. And it’s not like a chocolate bar is going to undo the last few weeks.

But she was at the grocery store, and she saw the words ‘organic’ and ‘macrobiotic’ on the label. And she thought of him.

She’s been thinking of him a lot, wondering if she should confess to what she saw in the Stitch.

The way he sees her.

But she can’t even figure out how she feels about what she saw. Pleased, maybe a part of her. But mostly confused. And silly for never noticing. It seems more obvious in retrospect.

Scared.

So for now she says nothing. She settles for awkward silences where there used to just be comfort.

She holds her tongue.

“Alright then,” Cameron says, ending another uncomfortable pause to gesture for Kirsten to climb into the Fish Tank. She can hear him mutter the word “weird” under his breath as she walks away.

And it is weird, as much as she doesn’t want it to be. But things could be way worse than weird.

Broken. Unfixable. Ruined.


	12. Warm Sweaters (Fixed)

Kirsten shivers in the thin material of her long-sleeved shirt. It should not be allowed to get this cold in southern California.

Maybe she should start keeping a spare jacket in Cameron’s trunk. She already has one in the lab, to combat the way too high air conditioning settings.

Her concentration is focused between the icy breeze bombarding her and trying to spot the exact stretch of beach she saw in the Stitch. She doesn’t notice Cameron shrugging off his jacket, then his cardigan.

“Take this, space cadet,” he taps her on the shoulder and holds out the green sweater. “You look cold.”

“I’m fine,” she tells him. “You need it.”

None of the giant rocks littering the shoreline match the ones she saw. Maybe the tide was out more then. She’ll have to adjust her strategy.

Cameron drapes the cardigan over her shoulder, forcing her to take it.

“Good thing I have this badass leather jacket to keep me warm,” he says. “I gave you the cardigan because I didn’t think you could pull this off.”

Kirsten snorts, “You look like a toddler borrowing his big brother’s clothes.”

Cameron just laughs.

Kirsten slides her arms through the sleeves of his cardigan. It’s still warm from his body. The sleeves and shoulders are a bit stretched out, but otherwise it fits her pretty well.

And most importantly, it blocks some of the chill off the water.

When they finally make it back to Cameron’s car, warm and toasty with the hood up, she’s reluctant to take it off.

She makes herself shiver a bit to convince Cameron she still needs it. After all, her fingers are still a bit numb.

“Just give it back to me after you wash it,” he says when he drops her off at home.

When he spots it laid across her desk chair a month later, he doesn’t comment.


	13. Cold

“You’re insane,” she tells him when he pulls himself back up onto the dock. “You said there wasn’t even any cash in it.”

“Do you know how time consuming it is to cancel all your credit cards?” he asks.

He’s done it twice before; it’s not fun.

“No,” Kirsten says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “I’ve never thrown my wallet into the ocean.”

Neither has he.

“It fell.”

Out of his back pocket, into the water, in the middle of the night, in January.

Even in LA, that meant jumping in to get it was painful.

He shivers, and finds that he can’t stop.

“Can I go home and change before we continue on this wild goose chase?” he asks.

Kirsten’s past is a maze. For every answer they find, another dozen questions pop up. At least now they have the box that was left for her in the hull of The Stinger.

Kirsten looks insulted, “Of course. You’ve got to be miserable. We can even open the box there.”

It’s a long walk back to his car, made all the worse by the breeze through his sopping wet clothes.

He’s going to take a long shower when they get back, and change into his warmest sweats.

But the cold dissipates a little when Kirsten wraps an arm around him and pulls him against her.

He knows he’s dripping all over her, but she doesn’t show any annoyance (she doesn’t show any pleasure either, but that’s to be expected).

He thinks this might be a baby step in an interesting direction.


	14. "Call me when you get home."

“Call me when you get home,” Cameron makes her promise.

Kirsten insists that she’ll be fine, that it’s just the bus, that calling him defeats the entire purpose of him letting her sort her thoughts out in peace. But eventually she agrees.

He decides not to push his luck by hanging around until she gets on board.

The drive home is quick, although Cameron’s so wrapped up in thoughts about Kirsten that he doesn’t remember any of the actual driving.

Hopefully he didn’t run through any of those red light cameras.

Even though it’s unlikely (impossible, really) that Kirsten bear him home, Cameron checks his phone.

No messages. No missed calls.

He understands her disappointment. They’ve had nothing but dead ends for months when it comes to this whole Ed Clark situation. They’ve looked at it from every angle, and only come up empty handed.

He also understands that disappointment is a relatively new feeling for Kirsten.

And that’s why he worries.

He doesn’t want her frustration to get the best of her, make her do something rash.

She will, of course, charge headfirst into some sort of threatening situation, there’s not stopping that. But he’d like to at least be there to try and bail her out.

And a lot of dangerous ideas can come to Kirsten in the time it takes to ride a bus across town.

He should shower and get some sleep, it’s been a long day, and it’ll probably be another long day tomorrow. Maggie’s certainly keeping them busy. But won’t go anywhere that he can’t answer his phone until he knows Kirsten is home safe. What if she needs him?

Cameron settles for turning on the TV as a distraction, but he spends more time watching the tiny screen of his phone than the very large, very expensive television screen hanging on his wall.

So instead he tries phone Tetris. It’s mindless, but it eats the time. The bricks are just starting to fall too fast when her text comes through.

_Home. Door locked. Pajamas on. Not leaving. Are you happy now?_

He never knew a text message could be loaded with so much attitude.

And while he might not be happy (he won’t be happy until they have concrete answers to whatever Ed Clark’s big secret is), he’s certainly less worried.


End file.
